A lawyer for several women who say they were victims of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking why the FBI “utterly failed” to investigate the well-connected financier.
The letter, sent this week to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, says that the FBI knew about allegations about Epstein back in the 1990s but failed to take any substantial action.
“As counsel to many survivors of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking conspiracy, we write regarding the failure of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to properly, adequately, or timely investigate the sex trafficking of hundreds of girls and young women,” a letter from lawyer Jennifer Freeman says. “The FBI utterly failed to investigate serious allegations involving Epstein’s, and perhaps others’, child sex abuse materials (CSAM), significant additional criminality which, until recently, has been disregarded, disrespected, and essentially denied.”
The women want an explanation for why it took so long for substantive legal action to be taken against Epstein and asked the DOJ to investigate the FBI over its handling of the Epstein case.
One woman, Maria Farmer, said she had told the FBI that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sexually abused her and that she had seen other signs that the two of them were “committing multiple, serious, sexual abuse crimes, including hands-on sexual abuse, against minors and vulnerable young women.”
While working for Epstein in New York City, Farmer, an artist, said that she witnessed young girls entering and leaving Epstein’s mansion, and said that she was later abused by Epstein and Maxwell while working on a project in Ohio. She said that they threatened to burn all her artwork after she confronted them about stealing photographs of her partially dressed 11-year-old sister.
“Deathly afraid, on August 29, 1996, Ms. Farmer reported in detail Epstein’s and Maxwell’s criminality to her local police department, the NYPD Sixth Precinct. The NYPD said that while they could address the local fire threats, they were unable to do anything about other possibly illegal activities occurring outside their jurisdiction, such as the abuse and theft perpetrated in Ohio, and other illegal activities,” the letter says.
Farmer says that she then filed a complaint with the FBI but did not hear back until 2006, roughly ten years later. During that investigation, the letter says that complaints about CSAM were overlooked.
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“Amazingly, despite a plethora of evidence of a far-reaching conspiracy to traffic women, and numerous red flags concerning possible CSAM, federal law enforcement stood by silently and didn’t take action,” Freeman wrote.
The letter says that hard drives from Epstein’s Palm Beach home went missing leading up to his 2008 conviction, and are still missing today. In 2008, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison for state level prostitution charges and received a secret non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors.
“After the slap-on-the-wrist sentence, Epstein and others continued their criminal enterprise, while the FBI did little more for another decade,” the letter continues. “The FBI’s repeated and continual failures, delays, and inaction allowed Epstein and others to continue their sex trafficking conspiracy for nearly a quarter of a century.”
Referencing recent reporting that current CIA director William Burns met with Epstein in 2014, the letter suggests that Epstein may have links with the government.
“There is strong circumstantial evidence in the public domain that Epstein’s special relationship with the government explains the FBI’s failure to investigate or prosecute Epstein in 1996, the special treatment he received from 2005 to 2008, and the failure to investigate the possible wrongdoing of important public officials and powerful businessmen,” the letter says.
Epstein died in August 2019 while being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, awaiting trial for sex trafficking related charges.